Why Addiction is Not a Disease: Into the Debate

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Why Addiction is Not a Disease Into the Debate
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Why Addiction is Not a Disease!

• One of the main proponents
• Stanton Peele
• http//www.peele.net/
• https//www.youtube.com/watch?v05ANXZKdCg0
• http//www.peele.net/lib/foxnfriends.html

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Main Messages

• A host of addictions may be understood as
  disease, but they are not diseases
• Addiction is an experience people can get caught
  up in but that still expresses their values,
  skills at living, and personal resolve or lack
  of it.
• Upon stopping use peoples problems dont
  disappear
• Addiction has become a marketplace

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Sit with this

• We will never, ever treat away drug abuse,
  alcoholism, and the host of other behaviors that
  are now called addictive behaviors

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Main Messages (cont.)

• No biological urge to form addictions that will
  one day be found under the microscope
• We are creating more addictions ever year /
  generation (who we often tell will never get
  better)
• CHILD OF A PERSON WITH A DISEASE OF ALCOHOLISM
• Mix up moral responsibility with disease diagnosis

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Peeles idea of treatment / helping

• Nurturing communities can protect and support the
  individual and family reduce an entire range of
  illness
• Here people learn that can control their
  destinies Self Efficacy
• But we have not capitalized on self-efficacy,
  connection, support, and education instead we
  find it easier to

Invest in medical technology
Big Business
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The Disease Timeline
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First Generation Diseases AIDS
Clearly connected with the functioning of the body
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Second Generation DiseasesMental Disorders
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Third Generation Addictions
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Convincing Ourselves the Impossible

• Mental problems as diseases broadly accepted by
  1950s
• Mentally people are sick like those suffering
  from sore throatsMedical science knows neither
  specific causesnor specific ways of preventing
  them (World Book Encyclopedia, 1961)
• Are we closer today?

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Szasz, Foucault, Bateson, Laing
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Szasz, Foucault, Bateson, Laing Explanations /
Answers

• Family and the double bind
• Community
• Deep Understanding / Safety and Support
• Spiritual Journey
• Accountability
• Taking responsibility
• Today for good and bad, greater public seduced by
  enthusiasm in neurosciences.

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No doubt great increased understanding of brain,
which has helped reduce suffering from 1st
generation diseases

• But why then have 1st and 2nd generation disease
  rates climbed?
• Why so many pills?
• Why are a great deal of so called addicts now
  dually diagnosed?
• It is obvious that medical and pharmaceutical
  breakthroughs for first-generation diseases have
  not been forthcoming in dealing with our second
  and more noticeably 3rd generation diseases.
• Medical community has itself contributed to
  increase in addiction?

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AA Becomes Institutionalized

• Private fellowship now co-opted into mainstream
  medicine and psychotherapy (1970s)
• Linchpin for services (widespread in U.S. and
  Canada)
• We become convinced (lay public) millions of
  people are in need of services (just not
  acknowledging)
• Thus AA moved away from an anonymous program one
  where law, medicine and the like now coerce
  people into a one size fits all approach.
• An approach that suggests once and alcoholic
  always an alcoholic

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Diseasing of America

• AA/Medical view is popular and is being applied
  to every-kind of behavioral problem
• Gambling
• Overeaters
• Compulsive shoppers
• Relationships addicts, love addicts, and sex
  addicts
• Suffers from agoraphobia to severe anxiety to
  eating paint chips
• ADCOA
• Depression
• PMS
• Video Game Addicts

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Can We Escape Being Diseased?

• Worse yet, disease according to its own tenets -
  is biological in nature, and yet sufferer(s) are
  told they are incurable!

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Conclusions Peeles Final Stand

• Disease conceptions are bad science
• Biology is not behavior
• Peoples belief that they have a disease makes it
  less likely that they will outgrow the problem
• We also most guaranteeing relapse
• Lastly, the pseudo-medical and treatments of new
  diseases increasingly determine our feelings, our
  self-concepts, and our world views defining our
  culture and who we are.

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Draw Backs Unpeeling Peele

• Lets Chat!